


Put All Common Sense Aside (it makes me feel so alive)

by cyphre



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Soul Bond, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-29
Packaged: 2017-11-22 02:00:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyphre/pseuds/cyphre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The name on your wrist will lead you to your soulmate, the one person meant for you. Monroe should have guessed that finding his soulmate would never be easy.</p>
<p>(Written for <a href="http://grimm-kink.dreamwidth.org/3689.html?thread=2570345#cmt2570345">this</a> prompt on grimm_kink.)</p>
<p>Contains some background Monroe/Angelina, Nick/Juliette.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

When Monroe turns 16 his parents sit him down and explain the soulmate mark to him. He already has an idea of course. He's seen his parent's marks, has seen his pack-mates develop theirs, seen his pack's joy whenever someone finds their mate, but until now he's never really understood what makes it such a big deal. 

Every Blutbad gets a soulmate mark between the ages of 16 and 21, his parents tell him. It’s something to cherish, they say.  
His father tells him about how he searched across the country for his mate, how he would have searched the entire world if he'd had to, if Monroe's mother hadn't found him first.  
His mother tells him about how a soulmate is yours forever, will always accept you and love you, just like you will love them. It's the one constant in a Wesen's world, she says.  
They talk of the joy and the love and the wonder, and it all seems so overwhelming to Monroe.

When he is excused Monroe secrets himself away in his room and stares at his wrist, at the spot where his mark will be one day. He’s not sure how to feel about it. There's a part of him, the part that doesn't ever feel like he truly fits in with his pack, that hopes the mark comes today. The desperate part of his soul that wants someone to truly like him for who he is, to not look at him in disgust when he chooses to read his books instead of go on a hunt with his pack-mates. He looks at his wrist and he hopes. 

-

But the mark doesn't appear that year, or the next, or the ones following, until he's on the cusp of his 20th birthday, stretched out above Angelina on her bed, his fangs lightly grazing across one of her nipple as he lifts his hand to tease the other breast. He glances across at his hand and freezes. There's something on his wrist. _His mark_. At last. 

“Monroe? What's wrong?” Angelina asks breathlessly, her hand patting his head clumsily, encouraging him back to his task. 

“Nothing. It's nothing.” he says and pushes his wrist down onto the mattress, concealing it, because he can't make out the name yet, but he can see enough to know it’s far too short to be hers, and in a way he's always known it wouldn't be but it still breaks his heart to see the confirmation. 

He turns back to her and catches her mouth for a kiss, his hand trailing down her side. Their parting will not be pleasant, he knows, but he can at least give her this night. 

-

In the early hours of the morning Monroe extricates himself from Angelina’s arms and slips quietly downstairs, easing the door open and sliding out into the night. He stands on her porch and takes a deep breath, steadying himself for this life changing event.

He pauses.

He can't look here. Not on the doorstep of the woman he loves. He can't look at the name of the person that will rip him away from her when she's sleeping contentedly little more than 15 feet away. 

He walks down the path and on to the street, picks up his pace, faster, faster, and pretends he’s not running away from Angelina and the conversation he should be having.

-

Later, in the safety if his own kitchen, beer in hand, Monroe steels himself to look. He feels like he's being torn in two by the joy and terror raging inside him. Its ridiculous, he thinks, he’s spent years waiting impatiently for this moment, wanting it desperately, but now the idea of knowing fills him with an irrational fear. 

_Suck it up_ , he growls at himself, gulping down half his beer, and flips his hand over, focusing on the print on his wrist. 

“No,” he whispers, horrified, “No. No, no, _no_.”

It can’t be right, there must be some mistake, this isn't happening.

On his wrist is a single word, taunting him, tearing his world apart. 

**GRIMM**. 

_No_.


	2. Chapter 2

Nick first learns about soul bonds in school. He’s 12 years old and he can’t understand why people even have soulmates - the names on his parent’s wrists are not each other’s, but they’re happy and in love and perfect together, so what’s the point of even having a soulmark?

Then Nick’s parents die and he goes to live with his Aunt. She guards her wrist like it’s a vital organ, keeping it covered at all times.

Sometimes he catches her sitting at the kitchen table with an awful look on her face like her heart is being ripped out in front of her eyes, desolate and sad and resigned. Sometimes Nick thinks he hears her crying at night.  
He thinks maybe her soulmate died, or maybe he was just an asshole that broke her heart. Either way, he decides, he never wants to find his soulmate. He doesn’t even _want_ one.

-

Want doesn’t come into it though. He’s 17, drunk and high, dancing with some nameless girl at a house party. She’s the one that draws his attention to it.

“What kind of name is ‘Blut Bad’?” She asks, trailing her fingers down his wrist.

“What?”

“Your soulmate. That’s such a weird name. I guess it means you won’t have much trouble finding them if you want to though, hey?”

Nick blinks, trying to comprehend what she’s saying through the haze of alcohol and weed. “I don’t have a soulmate,” he says, frowning.

“That’s not what your wrist says, silly,” she smiles at him flirtatiously, ‘don’t worry, baby, I’m not the sort to insist you save yourself for your soulmate.”

She presses up against him again, gyrating in time to the music, while he looks at his wrist.

Sure enough, there’s something there, but it’s not a name. It’s just one word, one that Nick doesn’t recognise.

 **BLUTBAD**.


	3. Chapter 3

Monroe doesn’t call Angelina until the next afternoon. It takes him half an hour to psych himself up, but once he’s on the phone it’s surprisingly easy to explain himself. He says _I’m sorry_ , and _I have to do this_ , and _I love you, but..._

There’s a lot of screaming.

When he finally hangs up, unable to bear her shouts and her sobs any longer, his phone begins to ring almost immediately. He let’s it ring out. When it starts up again, he pulls it out of the wall and goes and sits out in the afternoon sun.

It was hard to break up with Angelina, especially considering the name his wrist bears. Monroe feels like his life has become a sick joke. He feels like covering his wrist and never looking at it again, he feels like tearing the mark from his skin and running back to Angelina.  
It’s not fair. No Wesen should ever be destined to be with a Grimm. He rubs the pad of his thumb over the word. Hell, the Grimm thing aside, he’s never heard of anyone getting a soulmark that wasn’t a name.

 _Figures_ , he thinks. Not only is he destined to be with a creature who’ll probably want to separate his head from his shoulders, but if he wants to find them he’ll have to get close to every Grimm he can find. He may as well lie down and die now.

He doesn’t have to do this. His pack would understand. Within the Blutbad community it is essentially taboo to ignore a soulmark, and to do so under normal circumstances would find him ostracised from his pack, from his species as a whole. These are far from normal circumstances though, and if there was ever a time to bend the rules, it would be now. That is, if they didn’t cast him out for bearing a Grimm’s mark instead.

I doesn’t matter though, because no matter how scared he is, no matter how much he wishes things were different, his soulmate is out there somewhere, and Monroe will find them.

He just hopes it won’t kill him.

-

Nick stumbles home in the early hours of the morning, still far from sober and more than a little pissed off. His mind is so preoccupied that he makes absolutely no attempt to conceal the fact that he’s just now getting home. Aunt Marie will have a lot to say on the subject in the morning, but he can’t bring himself to care.

He slams the door of his room shut and heads directly to his dresser, rummaging through the drawers until he unearths a bandanna that he promptly ties around his wrist. He throws himself down on his bed and scowls at the ceiling until he succumbs to sleep.

-

On the first day of his search, Monroe packs a bag full of essentials, throws it in the trunk of his Beetle, and heads for the city.

He’s not really sure how to proceed with his hunt. The Wesen community is always happy to help one of their own to find their mate, but Monroe doubts that asking them to help him find his _Grimm_ mate will go over well. He can start making discreet enquiries into Grimm activity without revealing his motives, but to do that he needs to get away from his pack who will be sure to ask far too many questions, and who will want to see his soulmark as soon as Angelina gets the word out.

He doesn’t tell anyone he’s going, but he does write out a note.  
 _Gone to find my mate._ He writes, and then, after some consideration, adds to it.  
 _Won't be coming back. Give the house to Hap._

He pins it to the front door as he leaves.

-

Nick wakes up to a pounding headache and an odd combination of anger and apathy roiling in the pit of his stomach. He stumbles downstairs and flops down at the kitchen table with a glass of orange juice and two painkillers. His aunt regards him over her bowl of cereal, her expression distasteful. He's still wearing the clothes he had on last night and he reeks of booze and weed smoke, his eyes red and his hair greasy and disheveled. He thinks he probably has lipstick-ringed hickeys running up his neck from the girl who's name he never learnt.

He meets his aunt's eyes, challenging her to say something, to reprimand him, because he's itching for a fight. Instead, Marie's eyes flick down to the bandanna on his wrist and she returns to her breakfast without a word. It's probably the most understanding she's ever been of his wayward tendencies, but Nick doesn't feel thankful, just sick and angry and fed up with the world.

On Monday, he saunters into school an hour late with a brand new leather cuff on his wrist, and pretends that nothing has changed.


	4. Chapter 4

Nobody understands why Nick guards his wrist with the savagery of a rabid dog. Soulmarks aren't considered a big deal these days and they're worn openly both by those who have no interest in finding their mates and those few that are searching. 

Nick can't really explain it himself. Maybe it's because to him a soulbond feels like a prison, the thought of being tied to someone so deeply makes him terrified. Maybe its because he fears that his soulmate may be searching for him, that they’ll find him whether he wants them to or not. Maybe it's just because he doesn't want people to know that he bears the german word for bloodbath on his skin. 

He gets into a fight, hardly his first, and he can't even remember why it started, but by the time he's dragged away, his knuckles are bruised and bleeding and his lip is split. He finds himself in the principal’s office with his aunt, listening to phrases like _extended grieving period_ and _professional help_.

And just like that he has a regular weekly appointment with a therapist. 

-

The thing is, Nick doesn't want to be this person. He doesn't want to fight and act out and treat everybody like shit. Its just...

His parents died. 

His parents died, and it was horrible and he hurt and cried and hated that they were gone, but then he moved on.

He missed them still, and he cried for them. Of course he did. He was twelve and he’d lost the two people that meant the most to him, but after a time he wanted to get out and do stuff.   
But when he visited his friends to ask if they’d like to go to the park or catch a movie, their parents would hover behind them at the door and say things like _maybe you should spend some time with your aunt_ and his friends would smile at him with this _poor Nick_ look in their eyes and tell him _maybe next week_.

In school his teachers would treat him with kid gloves, never scolding him for handing in homework late, and when he was handed back his tests they’d always be scored differently to the other kid’s because _I know you’ve had a lot on your plate, Nick, so I don’t expect you to be keeping up with the work right now_.

Eventually, he starts to use his teachers leniency as an excuse to sit at the back of the class and ignore the world. He makes new friends, ones who don’t care that he’s an orphan as long as he can steal bottles of whiskey from his Aunt’s cupboard.

So when his old friends look at him with a mixture of fear and disgust when he and his mates sit behind the bike shed and pass around a joint, and when his teachers start to tell him that he needs to pick up his grades, he sneers at them all and thinks _you can’t complain, you did this, you made me this way_.

He knows what they say when they talk about him - that it's been five years. That he should be moving past it. But he’s not grieving anymore. He’s just so _angry_.

His aunt tries, and she's great, but even after all this time she’s still awkward with parenting, too caught up in her own problems and her own anger, so often away on business.

He feels like a burden, and that just feeds his anger.

He tried to explain it to his therapist.

He doesn't think he did a good job.


End file.
